Modern Mixed Bag

Mike FloresThursday, November 15, 2012

his past weekend saw quite the diverse Top 8 for Grand Prix Chicago and its featured Modern format. In fact, there was only one duplicate archetype in all the Top 8!

Like so:

Jund

Jund, the most popular deck of the recent Pro Tour Return to Ravnica, was the only deck to show up twice in this Top 8. Two things to note about this particular Jund-phenomenon: (1) this is not your father's Jund deck, and (2) it's probably pretty good given that it faced off against itself, first-against-second.

Utter-Leyton and Wilson played a little something called Lingering Souls. Previously, we have seen Lingering Souls spawn two different White-Blue Delver of Secrets variants in Standard, solidify the grinding White-Blue Jace, the Mind Sculptor archetype in Legacy, and piggyback the graveyard-filling momentum of Mulch for games when Unburial Rites was not immediately available. Now, this white card with the black flashback is breaking new ground in making a pretty successful black-red-green deck just a bit better.

Other Jund decks being quite popular (and quite good at trading cards and coming off having pocketed a little value), Lingering Souls can give you the edge in the mirror. Lingering Souls puts you in a position where your Tarmogoyf has quite the advantage against your opponent's Tarmogoyf. In a fair matchup, it gives you fliers to race or a string of chumpers to block.

All in all, a pretty groundbreaking innovation for what could otherwise have been a stale—if colossally popular—archetype.

"Affinity" here has really only one card with affinity for artifacts (Thoughtcast), but that was a strong signal for Majlaton to go with a solo basic Island in his land count. In addition to Thoughtcast, Majlaton could summon Master of Etherium with his blue.

Rather than playing the midrange toolbox Plan B of Splinter Twin, Simon's deck has the shell of a blue-red control deck. He has some removal and he has some permission. I like how he can pick off, say, a combo containing Soul Warden with Grim Lavamancer. Cyclonic Rift is in a sense the ultimate trump. It can short-term answer almost any permanent (and a deck that can set up an infinite damage attack doesn't need a huge window)... and given sufficient mana it can do anything and everything from "making the opponent discard cards in excess of seven at the end of turn" to "making an opposing infinite attack deck pick up, say, 999 attacking Zealous Conscripts."

In addition to Cyclonic Rift, Simon incorporated Mizzium Skin as a new helper from Return to Ravnica. Mizzium Skin gives a creature hexproof, so it can be like a one-mana counterspell that can protect a key combo component from removal... even when that removal is, say, Abrupt Decay!

Simon's sideboard has quite a few of his deck's most impressive gems. A Stomping Grounds powers up Ancient Grudge, a Watery Grave is his point discard, but the most powerful of them is Blood Moon. Look around the mana bases of some of these decks. They will not do well with all basic Mountains! Simon's Blood Moon can slow down the majority of decks in Modern and completely work over a deck like Gifts Ungiven or anything Urzatron. Meanwhile, Simon's own deck requires but a single blue mana to go infinite.

This deck can do a little of everything and can do a fair number of things pretty well. Most of its cards are solid on their own... but in concert with one another they can set up synergies ranging from empty-handed lockdown to fast, Tinker-like (and oppressive) beatdown.

Gifts Ungiven is the card that laces together many of the powerful combinations in McDermott's deck. You can play Gifts as a pure-value two-for-one (and then use Snapcaster Mage to recoup something if you wanted it more, perhaps even putting Snapcaster Mage in the Gifts Ungiven)... Or you can put together specific combinations of cards to gain disproportionate advantages.

The above, but with four cards. Unlike when White-Blue Tron tried the Unburial Rites + X package last year, this version of Gifts Ungiven can actually tap for black mana easily... It might not be a thing to step the four-mana Gifts Ungiven into the five-mana Unburial Rites (depending on which cards go where). Essentially, this is like the previous option that might net you two more cards.

Gifts Ungiven—this intricate version with mostly one-ofs in particular—appeals to a certain kind of mage. Do you like to make lots of decisions in a game, some of them very difficult? Do you like having lots of different angles of attack and defense? Do you like to suffocate the opponent's strategy, maybe poking him or her 2 points at a time with Deathrite Shaman, more than dropping an unfair hammer yourself?

This is a deck with only twenty lands that can pop out one of the most expensive Planeswalkers in the game, or casually tutor up Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. It might only have twenty lands, but some of them tap for three mana!

Once Karn is on the battlefield, it is a dominant force. You can crush your opponent's hand over several turns, then reset the game (but with a massive preexisting advantage) or you can cripple the opponent's development, Sinkhole-style. Imagine you went first and played an Urza's Tower and a Chromatic Star. On your second turn, you drew, made , drew again, played an Urza's Power Plant, and finished the triumvirate with a Sylvan Scrying. On your third turn you played the Urza's Mine that completed the set and cast Karn Liberated (of course), at which point you removed your opponent's second land from the battlefield.

The alternative plan is to find Eye of Ugin, power that up, and then hard-cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. You take the extra turn, attack the opponent with Emrakul; it's about as easy to interact with for some decks as it sounds.

And yes, only twenty lands in this one... but boy does each one pack a value!

White-Blue Control

Rounding out this Top 8 of midrange and combo terrors is Edgar "onetime shows up in this column every week with Caw-Blade" Flores, again with a white-blue deck. Edgar made his umpteenth StarCityGames Open Series Top 8 recently with a Standard WU Control... He joked that yes, he really only ever plays white-blue:

Edgar lifted this deck from Emanuel Sutor and his recent performance at Grand Prix Lyon. Essentially, this is a midrange white-blue creature deck with a little enters-the-battlefield, a couple of control elements, and ultimately topping up on Baneslayer Angel.

It is interesting that the more restrictive Supreme Verdict has taken the place of traditional sweepers in a deck that can muster the blue mana... If you aren't worried about having a single , it is certainly an upgrade to Day of Judgment.

Make no mistake: WU Control is not as powerful as some of the other strategies. It can't go infinite like the Kiki-Jiki decks, and although it can grind, it lacks much of the individual card efficiency of a Jund (especially in topdeck situations). But if you want to play an interactive game with a traditional game plan, a deck like this one proves that the strategy can still perform in the face of Modern's mighty mixed bag.